Google+ Social Network Goes Beta with Original Mac Designer On Board

On Tuesday, Google launched their offensive against Facebook with the new Google+ social network, which has drawn praise from those with early invites. As it turns out, there’s a bit of Apple DNA inside the project, with a user interface created by original Macintosh team member Andy Hertzfeld.AppleInsider is reporting that the user interface design for Google’s new social networking project turns out to be a prominent original member of the Apple Macintosh design team, Andy Hertzfeld. The search giant launched Google+ on Tuesday in an effort to curtail the rise of Facebook, and thus far most of the early feedback has been for the user interface, courtesy of design leader Hertzfeld and his team.

Hertzfeld is legendary among die-hard Apple fans, having joined the company in 1979 as a self-described “Software Wizard” who was “instrumental” to the design of the original Macintosh graphic user interface. While Hertzfeld left the company in 1984, he continues to run the Mac history website Folklore.org, having founded a number of other companies prior to landing at Google in 2005.

Codenamed “Emerald Sea,” the Google+ project assigned Hertzfeld as the design leader, who soon found himself “constrained” at times with the company’s traditionally spartan designs, according to Wired.

From early reports, it seems as if Hertzfeld may have won out, overriding Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page’s dislike for “swooshy” designs and animations with the Google+ interface -- in particular the Circles grouping feature which “contains animation and other choices reminiscent of Apple’s design ideals.”

"With colorful animations, drag-and-drop magic and whimsical interface touches, Circles looks more like a classic Apple program than the typically bland Google app," claims Wired reporter Steven Levy, author of a recent book on Google entitled In The Plex.

Google+ launched on Tuesday with a “limited field trial” period by invitation only alongside an Android client app, and is promising an iOS version is “coming soon.”